to reflect with what propriety and juftness they are. applied to character! If we look into his characters, and how they are furnished and proportioned to the employment he cuts out for them, how are we taken up with the maftery of his portraits! What draughts of nature! What variety of ori ginals, and how differing each from the other! How are they dreffed from the ftores of his own luxurious imagination; without being the apes of mode, or borrowing from any foreign wardrobe! Each of them are the ftandards of fashion for themfelves like gentlemen that are above the direction of their tailors, and can adorn themfelves without the aid of imitation. If other poets. draw more than one fool or coxcomb, there is the fame refemblance in them, as in that painter's draughts, who was happy only at forming a rose:> you find them all younger brothers of the fame family, and all of them have a pretence to give the fame creft: But Shakespeare's clowns and fops come all of a different house: they are no farther allied to one another than as man to man, memhers of the fame fpecies: but as different in features and lineaments of character, as we are from one another in face, or complexion. But I am nawares lanching into his character as a writer, before I have faid what I intended of him as a private member of the republick.

Mr. Rowe has very justly observed, that people are fond of difcovering any little perfonal ftory.

of

of the great men of antiquity: and that the com mon accidents of their lives naturally become the fubject of our critical enquiries: That however trifling fuch a curiofity at the first view may appear, yet, as for what relates to men of letters, the knowledge of an author may, perhaps,+ fometimes conduce to the better understanding his works: And, indeed, this author's works, from. the bad treatment he has met with from his editors, have fo long wanted a comment, that one would zealously embrace every method of information, that could contribute to recover them from the injuries with which they have fo long lain o'erwhelmed,

'Tis certain, that if we have firft admired the man in his writings, his cafe is fo circumstanced, that we must naturally admire the writings in the man: That if we go back to take a view of his education, and the employment in life which: fortune had cut out for him, we fhall retain the ftronger ideas of his extenfive genius.

His father, we are told, was a confiderable dealer in wool; but having no fewer than ten children, of whom our Shakespeare was the eldeft, the best education he could afford him was no better than to qualify him for his own Bufinefsand employment. I cannot affirm with any certainty how long his father lived; but I take him to be the fame Mr. John Shakespeare who was living in the year 1599, and who then, in ho

nour

nour of his fon, took out an extract of his family-arms from the herald's office; by which it, appears, that he had been officer and bailiff of Stratford, and that he enjoyed fome hereditary lands and tenements, the reward of his great grandfather's faithful and approved service to King Henry VII.

Be this as it will, our Shakespeare, it seems, was bred for fome time at a free-school; the very free-school, I prefume, founded at Stratford: where, we are told, he acquired what Latin he was mafter of: but, that his father being obliged,, through narrowness of circumstances, to withdraw him too foon from thence, he was fo unhappily prevented from making any proficiency, in the dead languages: A point, that will deferve fome little difcuffion in the fequel of this differtation.

How long he continued in his father's way of bufinefs, either as an affiftant to him, or on his own proper account, no notices are left to inform us: nor have I been able to learn precifely at what period of life he quitted his native Stratford, and began his acquaintance with London and the STAGE.

In order to fettle in the world after a familymanner, he thought fit, Mr. Rowe acquaints us, to marry while he was yet very young. It is certain, he did fo: for by the monument, in Stratford church, erected to the memory of his daugh

ter

are two coats, I obferve, in Dugdale, where three filver fifhes are borne in the name of Lucy; and another coat, to the monument of Thomas Lucy,, fon of Sir William Lucy, in which are quartered in four feveral divifions, twelve little fifhes,. three in each divifion, probably Luces. This very coat, indeed, feems alluded to in Shallow's giving the dozen white Luces, and in Slender saying, He may quarter. When I confider the exceeding candour and good-nature of our author, (which inclined all the gentler part of the world to love him; as the power of his wit obliged the men of the most delicate knowledge and polite learning to admire him;) and that he should throwthis humorous piece of fatire at his profecutor, at least twenty years after the provocation given; I am confidently perfuaded it must be owing to an unforgiving rancour on the profecutor's fide: and if this was the cafe, it were pity but the difgrace of fuch an inveteracy fhould remain as a lafting reproach, and Shallow ftand as a mark of ridicule to ftigmatize, his malice.

It is faid, our author fpent fome years before his death, in eafe, retirement, and the converfation of his friends, at his native Stratford.. I could never pick up any certain intelligence,. when he relinquished the stage. I know, it has. been mistakenly thought by fome, that Spenfer's ¿ Thalia, in his Tears of his Mufes, where the laments. the lofs of her Willy in the comic scene, has been applied to our author's quitting the stage.

But:

But Spenfer himself, 'tis well known, quitted the ftage of life in the year 1598; and, five years after this, we find Shakespeare's name among the actors in Ben Johnson's Sejanus, which firft made its appearance in the year 1603. Nor, furely, could he then have any thoughts of retiring, fince, that very year, a licence under the privy-feal was granted by King James I. to him and Fletcher, Burbage, Phillips, Hemings, Condel, &c. authorizing them to exercise the art of playing Comedies, Tragedies, &c. as well at their usual house called the Globe on the other fide of the water, as in any other parts of the kingdom, during his majefty's pleasure: (a copy of which licence is preferved in Rymer's Fadera.) Again, it is certain, that Shakespeare did not exhibit his Macbeth, till after the union was brought about, and till after King James I. had begun to touch for the evil: for it is plain, he has inferted compliments, on both those accounts, upon his royal master in that tragedy. Nor, indeed, could the number of the dramatic pieces be produced, admit of his retiring near fo early as that period. So that what Spencer there fays, if it relate at all to Shakespeare, muft hint at fome Occafional recefs he made for a time upon a difguft taken: or the Willy, there mentioned, muft relate to fome other favourite Poet. I believe, we may fafely determine that he had not quitted in the year 1610. For in his Tempeft, our au-. thor makes. mention of the Bermuda Iflands,